Telemedicine program

The Regions Hospital Burn Center Telemedicine program connects Burn Center physicians and staff with our patients and care providers. Telemedicine allows rural clinicians to consult with our specialists while saving the patient the hardship of time and travel. During the past three years, we have conducted more than 470 follow-up visits with patients from Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa. Patients have been seen in large metropolitan hospitals, rural hospitals and clinics, workplaces, high schools and community colleges.

Services provided by this program are offered from the following specialists: burn physicians, plastic surgery physicians, burn therapists, occupational therapists, burn social worker and child and adult burn psychologist.

In one case, a burn patient from eastern Montana had traveled more than 1,600 miles, round trip, to be treated at The Burn Center. The Burn Center physician, along with the patient and the patient’s primary physician, agreed to use telemedicine for his follow-up visits. The patient now drives only 15 minutes to his local clinic. This patient’s last four visits have been conducted via video, saving the patient more than 6,400 miles in travel. The telemedicine visits allowed the patient, his primary physician and a local nurse the ability to interact face-to-face with Regions Hospital Burn Center staff. Our telemedicine program can save patients a significant amount of expense and travel time.

At this time, only routine burn consults are being conducted via telemedicine. In the near future, we plan on conducting emergency visits via telemedicine and we will also be accepting digitized, still photos sent via e-mail to the burn unit.